While Taco Bell is considered a Mexican restaurant chain, it offers unique and creative menu items you won’t find anywhere else. Consequently, Taco Bell has reached cult classic status for creating novelties with common Mexican ingredients. Lucky for us, Taco Bell’s ingenuity can be channeled into a home-cooked meal with affordable store-bought ingredients like nacho cheese. And a recent TikTok video from a former Taco Bell employee gave some insider tips on the affordable nacho cheese that best mimics Taco Bell’s version.
TikToker @DollarTreeDinners demonstrates how to make a 5-layer beef burrito with store-bought tortillas, refried beans, and of course, nacho cheese. According to her, Fritos jalapeño cheddar cheese dip tastes the most like Taco Bell’s nacho cheese. But an even cheaper dupe is the Dollar Tree jalapeño cheddar dip; a 9-ounce can of Fritos jalapeño cheddar dip is $3.59 on Amazon while Dollar Tree’s 9-ounce can of jalapeno cheddar cheese dip is $1.25. For that matter, you can use various Dollar Tree canned foods like refried beans, guacamole dip, and pickled jalapeños to make various Taco Bell favorites at half the price.
To make the burrito, warm the dip before spreading it over a warmed burrito tortilla to adhere to a taco tortilla, piling the classic bean, beef, cheese, and sour cream before rolling everything up. She doesn’t overdo it with burrito fillings, which is a key to an expertly rolled burrito.
More Taco Bell favorites to recreate
The 5-Layer Beef Burrito is one of many menu items at Taco Bell that includes nacho cheese sauce. So, a 9-ounce can of Dollar Tree jalapeño cheddar dip can be incorporated into any of your favorites. For example you can spread the dip over a large flour tortilla with ground beef, shredded cheddar, and jack cheese before folding and grilling it to recreate a Classic Stacker. The cheese dip is also used in burritos like the Cheesy Double Beef Burrito; a good substitute for Taco Bell’s fiesta strips would be these Chili Cheese Fritos. Vegetarians can add the cheese dip to a Cheesy Bean and Rice Burrito copycat, especially if they already have some leftover Mexican rice.
Of course, you can also recreate Loaded Beef Nachos or the Nachos BellGrande with your dupe sauce. We even have a long list of tortilla chip brands for the tastiest foundation. Whichever cheesy Taco Bell menu item you crave, warming up the jalapeño cheddar dip is an important step to achieve the perfect consistency. The same goes for refried beans; in a different video tutorial @DollarTreeDinners says that most canned refried beans are much thicker than Taco Bell’s refried beans, so you should warm them up with a quarter-cup of water to thin them out.
